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Title: The Role of Specific Ion Effects in Ion Transport: The Case of Nitrate and Thiocyanate

Journal Article · · Journal of Physical Chemistry. C

The selective transport of trivalent rare earth metals from aqueous to organic environments with the help of amphiphilic "extractants" is an industrially important process. When the amphiphilic extractant is positively charged or neutral, the coextracted background anions are not only necessary for charge balance but also have a large impact on extraction efficiency and selectivity. In particular, the opposite selectivity trends observed throughout the lanthanide series in the presence of nitrate and thiocyanate ions have not been explained. To understand the role of background anions in the phase transfer of lanthanide cations, in this work we use a positively charged long-chain aliphatic molecule, modeling a common extractant, and gain molecular level insight into interfacial headgroup-anion interactions. By combining surface sensitive sum frequency generation spectroscopy with X-ray reflectivity and grazing incidence X-ray diffraction, we observed qualitative differences in the orientational and overall interfacial structure of nitrate and thiocyanate solutions at a positively charged Langmuir monolayer. Though nitrate adsorbs without dramatic changes to the solvation structure at the interface or the monolayer ordering, thiocyanate significantly alters the water structure and reduces monolayer ordering. We suggest that these qualitatively different adsorption trends help explain a reversal in system selectivity toward lighter or heavier lanthanides in solvent extraction systems in the presence of nitrate or thiocyanate anions.

Research Organization:
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Advanced Photon Source (APS)
Sponsoring Organization:
National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Chemical Sciences, Geosciences & Biosciences Division
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-06CH11357
OSTI ID:
1606542
Journal Information:
Journal of Physical Chemistry. C, Journal Name: Journal of Physical Chemistry. C Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 124; ISSN 1932-7447
Publisher:
American Chemical SocietyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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